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In 2012, the English electronic music duo Disclosure dropped their hit single “Latch,” which featured the vocals of the at-the-time-unknown Sam Smith. Its complex harmonic structure and production, coupled with the pearly treble of Smith’s uniquely stunning vocal, had many hoping for Smith to continue their career down similarly eclectic and groundbreaking avenues. Yet, Smith’s first two albums, In the Lonely Hour and The Thrill of It All, were anything but — catering to legions of high school freshmen getting over their crushes, the albums’ banal ballads took our hopes for something as revelatory as “Latch” and drowned it in gallons of self-piteous treacle.
The beginning of Smith’s new album Love Goes — originally scheduled for a June 2020 release under the name To Die For, before COVID-19 drove them to change both — flashes promise, much like “Latch” did. In the opening song “Young,” Smith takes a heavy breath, as if they were long tired of public pressure weighing them down, before proclaiming, “I want to be wild and young.” Smith’s poignantly delicate vocal, swaddled within layers of Messina-tuned electronic harmonies, reminiscent of Bon Iver or Cashmere Cat, fuses beautifully with the exquisite production of Steve Mac (who had earlier collaborated with Smith on the single “Fire on Fire,” which reappears as one of the album’s six bonus tracks). “Young,” like “Latch,” takes full advantage of Smith’s unique musical gifts to deliver an electrifyingly heartrending track that pushes the boundaries of their sound.
Unfortunately, “Young,” along with a few of the tracks in the album’s first half, is as good as the album gets before it, much like Smith’s post-”Latch” career, torpedoes into a mess of melodramatic pop. Although its opening lines ostensibly signal Smith’s desire to cast aside the handcuffs of convention in favor of reckless hedonism, the declaration that immediately follows encapsulates the album’s shortcomings: “But they’re watching me, judging me / Making me feel so used / Can’t you see that all I wanna do / Is get a little wild.” Smith, frightened by those who are “watching” and “judging,” succumbs to the pressure and avoids getting too “wild.” Love Goes is cursed by restraint and caution — it frustratingly teeters on the precipice of artistic revelation, swiping at the next new page of Smith’s career, but its petulant attachment to the safe and shmaltzy stylings Smith is known for ultimately smothers its promising flashes.
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Smith dazzles in front of more electronically-influenced, modern backdrops; luckily, the first six tracks of the album’s eleven make full use of this complementary pairing. Right after the haunting ambience of “Young” comes the Shellback-produced “Diamonds,” which opens with more synth vocals, subtly panning inwards while swelling into an abrupt cutoff to give way to Smith’s vulnerable confessions. The pulse of the syncopated bass line drives the track’s club-like groove, painting a vivid image of a sweaty, sinister dance floor packed with heartbroken people looking to forget their troubles and make some bad decisions for the night. Smith’s voice, with its cataract force, crackles with nuanced emotional force as it delivers lines such as “You dream of glitter and gold / My hеart’s already been sold.”
The rest of the album’s first half also proves to be solid and engaging, constantly finding refreshing ways to twist and contort Smith’s voice and wring out every last drop of musical marvel it has to offer. The simultaneously confident and bitter “Another One,” with its liberal use of side-chained 808 drums, evokes the nostalgic dance-pop soundscape of Avicii or David Guetta. “My Oasis” viscerally imparts feelings of yearning through clever songwriting — Smith repeats, “My oa-” in the chorus, but the lead vocal never finishes the word — and Burna Boy’s smoky vocals pair nicely with Smith’s lyrical tenor. The disco/house-esque “Dance (’Til You Love Someone Else)” — which, along with “Another One,” was produced with Guy Lawrence of Disclosure — takes us back once again to that dark and dingy club floor, and Smith’s voice is distorted, modulated, and flanged in a maddeningly magnificent spectacle paralleling the track’s titular dance.
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Much like the hangover one may experience after a night-long bender on the dance floor, the second half of Love Goes jerks us back to reality, reminding us that the album’s transcendent first half is but a temporary fling. The flashing lights and synths suddenly vanish and are replaced by a piano sullied with too much reverb in the opening of “For The Lover That I Lost,” which hearkens back to Smith’s earlier oeuvre in the worst ways possible. Its histrionic and uninspired lyrics, such as “Think about your lips and the way they kiss / There’s so much I really miss about you,” could have been just as easily written by a middle schooler in their bedroom. Just when they had us believing that they had finally given up on the sappy violin-and-piano-ballad schtick, they had to shift gears in reverse.
To Smith’s credit, the final two songs on the album at least attempt to salvage their musical regression, but it is perhaps too little, too late — or, in the case of the album’s title track, too much, too late. “Love Goes” opens with a baroque melody that sounds like a pastiche of the Minuet in G major. Right when the song begins to feel like a nightmarish loop of a childhood piano lesson, the beat drops and triumphant horns break out in a fanfare. Smith and the featured Labrinth go from dull crooning to full-force gospel as a trap beat materializes underneath. It is certainly an exciting and welcome development, but it also makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the album, and it feels compensatory for the monotony of the previous tracks. And immediately following “Love Goes” is the closing track “Kids Again,” which sounds closer to country music than anything else on the album. Neither of these tracks are as flagrantly dreadful as the album’s piano ballads, but they hurt its overall cohesiveness. To fall from electronic heaven to ballad hell, and then amble into a strange purgatory combining classical music and country, is far too disorienting and only contributes to the album’s undoing.
Much like they did after “Latch,” Smith squanders their album’s promising start and surrenders to making saccharine radio pop instead; their voice, a singular and special entity, is once again imprisoned in a cage and forced to entertain the masses. The saddest part is that Smith seems to be becoming more and more aware of this — the brazen first half of Love Goes is proof enough that they are making conscious efforts to branch out and utilize the full potential of their instrument and musicality. At the end of the day, however, their fear of being too outside-the-box ultimately drives them back towards safer melodramatic ballads. And so we must wait yet again for Smith to seize their next opportunity and come out swinging; until then, we can cope by dancing the night away to the album’s first half, without a care in the world for the hangover looming dead ahead.
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